The Vatican Information Service is a news service, founded in the Holy See Press Office, that provides information about the Magisterium and the pastoral activities of the Holy Father and the Roman Curia...[+]

- Msgr. Frank J. Dewane of the clergy of the diocese of Green Bay, U.S.A., under-secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, as coadjutor of Venice (area 22,685, population 1,766,651, Catholics 218,173, priests 239, permanent deacons 75, religious 202), U.S.A. The bishop-elect was born in Green Bay in 1950 and ordained a priest in 1988.NER:NEC/.../LOPEZ:DEWANE VIS 20060425 (100)

VATICAN CITY, APR 25, 2006 (VIS) - For the occasion of Benedict XVI's forthcoming apostolic trip to Poland, his second visit outside Italy as Pope which is due to take place from May 25 to 28, we offer our readers statistics concerning the Catholic Church in Poland taken from the latest Statistical Yearbook of the Church with data relative to December 31, 2004.

Poland has a population of 38.2 million, of whom 36.6 million (95.8 percent) are Catholic. There are 45 ecclesiastical circumscriptions, 10,114 parishes and 800 pastoral centers of other kinds. Currently, there are 133 bishops, 28,546 priests, 24,826 religious, 1,081 lay members of secular institutes and 14,418 catechists. Minor seminarians number 1,803, and major seminarians 6,427.

A total of 315,698 children and young people attend 1,726 centers of Catholic education, from kindergartens to universities. Other institutions belonging to the Church, or run by priests or religious in Poland include 33 hospitals, 244 clinics, 267 homes for the elderly or disabled, 538 orphanages and nurseries, 1,820 family counseling centers and other pro-life centers, and 1,462 centers for education and social rehabilitation.OP/STATISTICS POLAND/... VIS 20060425 (190)